[TUHS] keyboards and command names
Arthur Krewat
krewat at kilonet.net
Thu Feb 6 09:40:43 AEST 2020
Have't seen mention of TOPS-10, or TOPS-20 for that matter... shortening
commands was a great time saver. Problem was, next time they added a
command, muscle memory had to relearn.
On 2/5/2020 5:20 PM, Dave Horsfall wrote:
> On Wed, 5 Feb 2020, Harald Arnesen wrote:
>
>> Norsk Data's OS Sintran was the same, except that "COLD-START"
>> (reboot the OS) was defined twice, so you had to spell it out in full.
>
> CDC's KRONOS also allowed abbreviated commands; I grew quite fond of
> typing "COMMO" for "COMMON" (attach to the system's common area) and
> "POO" for "POOL" (can't remember what that does, and my books are long
> gone).
>
> Cough cough... The above sequence was how you broke into KRONOS:
>
> COMMON SYSTEM
> POOL SYSTEM
> (quickly interrupt it)
>
> Get the timing right, and you were in supervisor mode (or whatever it
> was called). I remember when I was in the terminal room happily
> hacking away,
> when the shift supervisor and the centre manager happened to walk in,
> exclaiming "Security is pffft!". Terrified, I casually leaned over the
> Duckwriter pretending to look for something, to obscure just what I'd
> been typing...
>
> I dimly recall that you could log off other users by (somehow) sending
> a ^D to their terminal, but I could be confusing that with something
> else (this was decades ago).
>
> -- Dave
>
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